AFTER MUNSTER’S FIRST Champions Cup campaign ended with a 33-10 defeat to Saracens last weekend, former out-half Ronan O’Gara has called for critics of the province to give Anthony Foley time to find solutions.
O’Gara is a former team-mate of Foley’s and the Racing Metro Coach told 2FM’s Game On that he fully expects the 41-year old to get it right.
“Everybody will have their opinion on it. What’s important to realise – and Anthony would be the first to admit it because it’s his first year coaching I think it doesn’t matter – he’s the boss of Munster and he knows them inside out.
“He got criticism as a player, he gets criticism this week. Everyone who is in the game expects constructive criticism, but you earn it on the pitch.”
With Munster failing to qualify for the knockout stages in Europe for just the second time in 17 years, O’Gara is not surprised that there are a lot of people with an opinion on the province.
However, he would rather they kept anything that wasn’t a potential solution to themselves.
“I think the easiest thing to do after a game like Saturday is to list out the negative points. What I’ve found in my own career is the most important thing is to find solutions.
“Unless you have those solutions, I think it’s better that people keep their opinions to themselves because Ireland is full of negativity and full of people with bad things to say.
“What is very obvious after last Saturday is that the quality of the Munster backs isn’t at the level of the knock-out stages of Champions Cup rugby.
“The big disappointment was the scrum. I have very little knowledge of that and how it performed on the day. It’s small margins. Munster were blown away and they weren’t good enough. I have been on teams where that has happened and it happened once, but the great thing about being a Munster player is that it doesn’t happen twice.
“There are issues, definitely. Are they as big as people make them out? I don’t think so, but at the same time there is a stage where Munster are at a crossroads.”
You can listen back to the full interview here.
